


spend my life in the dark (for the sake of you and me)

by maharieel



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Angst, Death, F/F, Halfling, List Fic, This hurt me to write, Tiefling, ressurection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 11:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11012496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharieel/pseuds/maharieel
Summary: death can't hold everyone, but it can steal them for a time.





	spend my life in the dark (for the sake of you and me)

  * the first time thea dies, it’s a quiet thing
      * she dies with a soft gasp of breath, a soft thud of skin and bones on the ground, and no-one even notices until the monster takes a step to the side to reveal her crumpled form (so small, too small)
          * why do the good ones always go first? the question haunts nymeria, haunts her like too many other phantoms, and it stays, because thea’s a good one, better than all of them crushed into one and she doesn’t deserve to die
              * ~~(thea doesn’t deserve to die)~~


      * there’s a small circular stain of crimson left behind on the stone after she’s been dragged off by whoever was closest when she fell, cracks filled with blood marking the trail between the kill-sight and the corner she’s crumpled in
          * the others are screaming and yelling and flashing blades like such things can possibly deter such a feral beast, but nymeria doesn’t hear (she’s around the corner, too far away to hear, too far away to see, too lost in her own bloodied chest and battered hands to feel it, the _rupture_ )
              * thea is dead in the corner for the fatal few moments it takes to fell the beast, but the light is already gone


  * nymeria often thinks of the forest that tangled around her and squeezed the life out of her brother, out of _her_ bastien, and she wonders if the thought will ever leave her. deaths are there to linger, right? (deaths and betrayals, and the refusal of those too blind by fear and arrogance to possibly help a dying boy, _a boy_ , for god’s sake)
      * nymeria thinks she might have slaughtered everyone in that village, if not for being recaptured, because they killed her little brother
          * ~~(nymeria knows she would have)~~
      * if not deaths, nymeria knows darkness lasts, know that some birds must fly the coop but others are destined to stay and peck at the iron bars like the fools they are, blind to the door beckoning them
          * (nymeria thinks her demons are like that, sometimes, because she has every door thrown open and yet the shadows cling to the bars and _scream_ )
              * she supposes she should scream when she rounds the corner, armor in tatters, to see the bundle of golden curls and blood piled in the corner like dust piles on the window sills of her childhood home


  * nymeria doesn’t scream
      * no, because she’s a fool and fools revel in blindness, so she turns and _runs_
          * the wall meets her back and her eyes meet the floor and _gods, no, please no_ , because the good ones are supposed to outlive everyone and everything with their light, not be doused out so simply
              * (and it was simple, really, a blast of talons and teeth and thea was a battered mess, having lost her grip on the very strings keeping her tethered to existence)
                  * not that nymeria knows, not that she’ll ever know how easily her body tumbled to the stone, because _she wasn’t there_


  * the vomit comes up the second she’s put the rounding wall between her and the sight of … of …
      * she doesn’t notice the trembling of her hands shaking the daggers out of her grip, doesn’t realise the ghoulish monstrosity that’s her right arm shrink away with a twist and slice of skin, doesn’t feel the hands of someone on her shoulder trying to calm her down
          * oh, but she feels it now, the _tear inside of her_ , another piece of her heart torn out and scattered across the stone like a plaything, red meat thudding to a stop as the blood slowly dribbles down its sides
              * this is what it must have felt like, when bastien died, and for once she’s glad the feeling was taken from her
                  * ~~(this is what it must feel like to be unmade)~~


  * thea dies, is _dead_ , and all nymeria does is convulse and vomit and gasp and shatter into a million tiny, shadowy pieces around the corner because gods if she’s going to have the image of the woman she loves, pale and bloodied and … and … etched into her mind for the rest of eternity
      * the others shout and sob because _something’s wrong, something’s not working_ , but all nymeria does is stare across the way at her heart, torn asunder and warped in shadow, as more blood spills out around it like a macabre halo
          * (was this always how their love was supposed to end?)


  * the others sob and drop to their knees before nymeria and _beg her_ to help them save their treasured halfling cleric because _she loves you, she trusts you, she’ll come back for you_ , but all their tiefling ally does is slam her fist into the wall so hard her knuckles burst in a spray of red and scream at them
      * _no, no, no_
          * nymeria doesn’t think she can face her, doesn’t think she can face the woman she loves as a corpse (how can she love a corpse? ~~how does thea do it?~~ )
              * absently, in the back of her harrowed mind, nymeria thinks her patron might be smiling in his pit beneath her, talons clinking as he awaits her full submission to his cause in the wake of such devastation (that is how he found her, after all, desolate and alone)
                  * nymeria thinks she might accept him


  * images materialise before her eyes, and for a moment she fades away from the darkness that the world has suddenly been enveloped with
      * she’s kissing thea, lifting the woman’s small frame in her arms and throwing her atop the bed with a soft laugh, and _oh_ , nymeria almost wishes she was kissing thea right now, because kissing thea is one of the holiest things nymeria has ever let herself feel and _oh_
          * (perhaps holy things become corrupted, she thinks, when in contact with too much sin; perhaps she had corrupted thea’s soul)
              * nymeria thinks she would rather kiss thea now, instead of sit in a world without her


  * the first time thea dies, she comes back a few days later, laid out in a temple surrounded by tearful faces, but those few days aren’t kind for anyone, and the darkness of the cavern never leaves them
      * it clings to nymeria the most and she feels it, the claws wedged between her shoulder blades, the darkness dragging behind her like a slab of soaked-through, rotting meat
          * nymeria finds solace in the tavern, in the library, in the bustle of life that had suddenly been torn from her life and thrown to the ground so unceremoniously
              * she wanders to the edge of the woods where the temple lies, where thea lies, and stares
                  * and stares
                      * and stares _(oh gods, why is she crying?)_


  * the first time thea dies, she is not brought back by the woman she loves, and yet comes back anyway because she can’t find it in her cold, dead heart to mind, because she understands why nymeria couldn’t face it, because she wasn’t done living anyway
      * (secretly, privately, thea feels like a piece of her heart was left behind in the darkness, as if they forgot to put it back in when they’d been piecing her back together, as if nymeria had stolen that little piece and crushed it in her fist when she’d turned away)
          * ~~(openly, candidly, thea continues suffering for her anyway)~~




End file.
